We shouldn't be giving up on monetary policy, which for the past few years has been pretty much the only game in town as far as economic policy goes. Instead, we should be looking for a better balance between monetary and other growth-promoting policies, including fiscal policy.

While in most advanced economies, housing prices contracted for a prolonged period both during and after the crisis, in emerging markets, housing prices suffered brief declines, recovered quickly and have kept rising since.

The events of the last several months have revealed fundamental failures of the state: no effective military, no effective police or security forces, no effective governance structure, no effective macroeconomic management.

Rethinking and reforms are both taking place. But we still do not know the final destination, be it for the redefinition of monetary policy, or the contours of financial regulation, or the role of macroprudential tools.

If teachers don't perform their duties in school and students don't learn, or roads are actually not constructed properly, fiscal policy will have little traction when it comes to growth and social welfare.

The global economic crisis has given back to fiscal policy its high profile as an instrument of macroeconomic stabilization. A revived interest in the potential of fiscal policy to boost shared prosperity has followed. Instead of denying it, we should work on those conditions necessary for it to succeed.

The Congressional Budget Office is forecasting the slowest real recovery in the post-war era, and given trend inflation which does not rise above 2 percent, the slowest nominal recovery in the postwar era.

There is large consensus among economists for the long run: central banks will focus on more than just inflation, especially financial stability; but there will be a real challenge in developing an integrated approach.

The search for financial stability, through regulatory or macroeconomic policy, is just beginning. Should developing countries wait for new global standards to emerge, or tailor their own regulatory strategies?

We need a stimulus to prevent rapid and disorderly economic meltdown. We cannot aim to return to massive trade imbalances, huge government deficits, loose monetary policy, and debt based consumer spending.